How to calculate lambda parameter for Game of Life? - conways-game-of-life

Game of Life is an interesting Cellular Automata and I read at many places it has lambda of 0.273 roughly. Kindly help by answering how we actually calculate this value for game of life.

The calculation is very much implied by the definition: for the Game of Life, lambda is the fraction of states which leads to a non-quiescent state, ie: to the state 1.
As you said: there are three situations which cause a cell to be non-quiescent:
Alive cell with 2 alive neighbours
Alive cell with 3 alive neighbours
Dead cell with 3 alive neighbours
Or simplified:
Half of the states where we have two alive neighbours
All of the states with three alive neighbours
So if we sum the fractions of states the above two options represent, we have the total fraction of states leading to a non-quiescent state.
We can now use the calculations for binomial probabilities, where I'll write C(n,r) when I mean the binomial coefficient of N over R.
0.5 * C(8,2) * (0.5)^2 * (0.5)^6
C (8,3) * (0.5)^3 * (0.5)^5
_________________________________ +
which more equals 0.219 + 0.055 ~= 0.273

Related

Expected chain length after rehashing - Linear Hashing

There is one confusion I've about load factor. Some sources say that it is just the number of keys in hash table divided by total number of slots which is same as expected chain length for each slot. But that is only in simple uniform hashing right?
Suppose hash table T has n elements and we expand T into T1 by redistributing elements in slot T[0] by rehashing them using h'(k) = k mod 2m. The hash function of T1 is h(k) = k mod 2m if h(k) < 1 and k mod m if h(k) >= 1. Many sources say that we "Expand and rehash to maintain the load factor (does this imply expected chain length is still same?) Since this is not simple uniform hashing, I think the probability that any key k enters a slot is (1/4 + 1/2(m-1)).
For a key k (randomly selected), h(k) is first evaluated (there are 50-50 chances whether it is less than 1 or greater than or equal to 1) and then if it's less than 1, key k has JUST two ways - slot 0 or slot m. Hence, probability 1/4 (1/2 * 1/2) But if it is greater than or equal to 1, it has m-1 slots and could enter any and hence probability (1/2 * 1/m-1). So expected chain length would now be n/4 + n/2(m-1). Am I on right track?
The calculation for linear hashing should be the same as for "non-linear" hashing. With a certain initial number of buckets, uniform distribution of hash values would result in uniform placement. With enough expansions to double the size of the table, each of those values would be randomly split over the larger space via the incremental re-hashing, and new values would also have been distributed over the larger space. Incrementally, each point is equally likely to be at (initial bucket position) and (2x initial bucket position) as the table expands to that length.
There is a paper here which goes into detail about the chain length calculation under different circumstances (not just the average), specifically for linear hashing.

Random numbers that add to 1 with a minimum increment: Matlab

Having read carefully the previous question
Random numbers that add to 100: Matlab
I am struggling to solve a similar but slightly more complex problem.
I would like to create an array of n elements that sums to 1, however I want an added constraint that the minimum increment (or if you like number of significant figures) for each element is fixed.
For example if I want 10 numbers that sum to 1 without any constraint the following works perfectly:
num_stocks=10;
num_simulations=100000;
temp = [zeros(num_simulations,1),sort(rand(num_simulations,num_stocks-1),2),ones(num_simulations,1)];
weights = diff(temp,[],2);
I foolishly thought that by scaling this I could add the constraint as follows
num_stocks=10;
min_increment=0.001;
num_simulations=100000;
scaling=1/min_increment;
temp2 = [zeros(num_simulations,1),sort(round(rand(num_simulations,num_stocks-1)*scaling)/scaling,2),ones(num_simulations,1)];
weights2 = diff(temp2,[],2);
However though this works for small values of n & small values of increment, if for example n=1,000 & the increment is 0.1% then over a large number of trials the first and last numbers have a mean which is consistently below 0.1%.
I am sure there is a logical explanation/solution to this but I have been tearing my hair out to try & find it & wondered anybody would be so kind as to point me in the right direction. To put the problem into context create random stock portfolios (hence the sum to 1).
Thanks in advance
Thank you for the responses so far, just to clarify (as I think my initial question was perhaps badly phrased), it is the weights that have a fixed increment of 0.1% so 0%, 0.1%, 0.2% etc.
I did try using integers initially
num_stocks=1000;
min_increment=0.001;
num_simulations=100000;
scaling=1/min_increment;
temp = [zeros(num_simulations,1),sort(randi([0 scaling],num_simulations,num_stocks-1),2),ones(num_simulations,1)*scaling];
weights = (diff(temp,[],2)/scaling);
test=mean(weights);
but this was worse, the mean for the 1st & last weights is well below 0.1%.....
Edit to reflect excellent answer by Floris & clarify
The original code I was using to solve this problem (before finding this forum) was
function x = monkey_weights_original(simulations,stocks)
stockmatrix=1:stocks;
base_weight=1/stocks;
r=randi(stocks,stocks,simulations);
x=histc(r,stockmatrix)*base_weight;
end
This runs very fast, which was important considering I want to run a total of 10,000,000 simulations, 10,000 simulations on 1,000 stocks takes just over 2 seconds with a single core & I am running the whole code on an 8 core machine using the parallel toolbox.
It also gives exactly the distribution I was looking for in terms of means, and I think that it is just as likely to get a portfolio that is 100% in 1 stock as it is to geta portfolio that is 0.1% in every stock (though I'm happy to be corrected).
My issue issue is that although it works for 1,000 stocks & an increment of 0.1% and I guess it works for 100 stocks & an increment of 1%, as the number of stocks decreases then each pick becomes a very large percentage (in the extreme with 2 stocks you will always get a 50/50 portfolio).
In effect I think this solution is like the binomial solution Floris suggests (but more limited)
However my question has arrisen because I would like to make my approach more flexible & have the possibility of say 3 stocks & an increment of 1% which my current code will not handle correctly, hence how I stumbled accross the original question on stackoverflow
Floris's recursive approach will get to the right answer, but the speed will be a major issue considering the scale of the problem.
An example of the original research is here
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/05/monkeys-stocks-study_n_3021285.html
I am currently working on extending it with more flexibility on portfolio weights & numbers of stock in the index, but it appears my programming & probability theory ability are a limiting factor.......
One problem I can see is that your formula allows for numbers to be zero - when the rounding operation results in two consecutive numbers to be the same after sorting. Not sure if you consider that a problem - but I suggest you think about it (it would mean your model portfolio has fewer than N stocks in it since the contribution of one of the stocks would be zero).
The other thing to note is that the probability of getting the extreme values in your distribution is half of what you want them to be: If you have uniformly distributed numbers from 0 to 1000, and you round them, the numbers that round to 0 were in the interval [0 0.5>; the ones that round to 1 came from [0.5 1.5> - twice as big. The last number (rounding to 1000) is again from a smaller interval: [999.5 1000]. Thus you will not get the first and last number as often as you think. If instead of round you use floor I think you will get the answer you expect.
EDIT
I thought about this some more, and came up with a slow but (I think) accurate method for doing this. The basic idea is this:
Think in terms of integers; rather than dividing the interval 0 - 1 in steps of 0.001, divide the interval 0 - 1000 in integer steps
If we try to divide N into m intervals, the mean size of a step should be N / m; but being integer, we would expect the intervals to be binomially distributed
This suggests an algorithm in which we choose the first interval as a binomially distributed variate with mean (N/m) - call the first value v1; then divide the remaining interval N - v1 into m-1 steps; we can do so recursively.
The following code implements this:
% random integers adding up to a definite sum
function r = randomInt(n, limit)
% returns an array of n random integers
% whose sum is limit
% calls itself recursively; slow but accurate
if n>1
v = binomialRandom(limit, 1 / n);
r = [v randomInt(n-1, limit - v)];
else
r = limit;
end
function b = binomialRandom(N, p)
b = sum(rand(1,N)<p); % slow but direct
To get 10000 instances, you run this as follows:
tic
portfolio = zeros(10000, 10);
for ii = 1:10000
portfolio(ii,:) = randomInt(10, 1000);
end
toc
This ran in 3.8 seconds on a modest machine (single thread) - of course the method for obtaining a binomially distributed random variate is the thing slowing it down; there are statistical toolboxes with more efficient functions but I don't have one. If you increase the granularity (for example, by setting limit=10000) it will slow down more since you increase the number of random number samples that are generated; with limit = 10000 the above loop took 13.3 seconds to complete.
As a test, I found mean(portfolio)' and std(portfolio)' as follows (with limit=1000):
100.20 9.446
99.90 9.547
100.09 9.456
100.00 9.548
100.01 9.356
100.00 9.484
99.69 9.639
100.06 9.493
99.94 9.599
100.11 9.453
This looks like a pretty convincing "flat" distribution to me. We would expect the numbers to be binomially distributed with a mean of 100, and standard deviation of sqrt(p*(1-p)*n). In this case, p=0.1 so we expect s = 9.4868. The values I actually got were again quite close.
I realize that this is inefficient for large values of limit, and I made no attempt at efficiency. I find that clarity trumps speed when you develop something new. But for instance you could pre-compute the cumulative binomial distributions for p=1./(1:10), then do a random lookup; but if you are just going to do this once, for 100,000 instances, it will run in under a minute; unless you intend to do it many times, I wouldn't bother. But if anyone wants to improve this code I'd be happy to hear from them.
Eventually I have solved this problem!
I found a paper by 2 academics at John Hopkins University "Sampling Uniformly From The Unit Simplex"
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nasmith/papers/smith+tromble.tr04.pdf
In the paper they outline how naive algorthms don't work, in a way very similar to woodchips answer to the Random numbers that add to 100 question. They then go on to show that the method suggested by David Schwartz can also be slightly biased and propose a modified algorithm which appear to work.
If you want x numbers that sum to y
Sample uniformly x-1 random numbers from the range 1 to x+y-1 without replacement
Sort them
Add a zero at the beginning & x+y at the end
difference them & subtract 1 from each value
If you want to scale them as I do, then divide by y
It took me a while to realise why this works when the original approach didn't and it come down to the probability of getting a zero weight (as highlighted by Floris in his answer). To get a zero weight in the original version for all but the 1st or last weights your random numbers had to have 2 values the same but for the 1st & last ones then a random number of zero or the maximum number would result in a zero weight which is more likely.
In the revised algorithm, zero & the maximum number are not in the set of random choices & a zero weight occurs only if you select two consecutive numbers which is equally likely for every position.
I coded it up in Matlab as follows
function weights = unbiased_monkey_weights(num_simulations,num_stocks,min_increment)
scaling=1/min_increment;
sample=NaN(num_simulations,num_stocks-1);
for i=1:num_simulations
allcomb=randperm(scaling+num_stocks-1);
sample(i,:)=allcomb(1:num_stocks-1);
end
temp = [zeros(num_simulations,1),sort(sample,2),ones(num_simulations,1)*(scaling+num_stocks)];
weights = (diff(temp,[],2)-1)/scaling;
end
Obviously the loop is a bit clunky and as I'm using the 2009 version the randperm function only allows you to generate permutations of the whole set, however despite this I can run 10,000 simulations for 1,000 numbers in 5 seconds on my clunky laptop which is fast enough.
The mean weights are now correct & as a quick test I replicated woodchips generating 3 numbers that sum to 1 with the minimum increment being 0.01% & it also look right
Thank you all for your help and I hope this solution is useful to somebody else in the future
The simple answer is to use the schemes that work well with NO minimum increment, then transform the problem. As always, be careful. Some methods do NOT yield uniform sets of numbers.
Thus, suppose I want 11 numbers that sum to 100, with a constraint of a minimum increment of 5. I would first find 11 numbers that sum to 45, with no lower bound on the samples (other than zero.) I could use a tool from the file exchange for this. Simplest is to simply sample 10 numbers in the interval [0,45]. Sort them, then find the differences.
X = diff([0,sort(rand(1,10)),1]*45);
The vector X is a sample of numbers that sums to 45. But the vector Y sums to 100, with a minimum value of 5.
Y = X + 5;
Of course, this is trivially vectorized if you wish to find multiple sets of numbers with the given constraint.

explanation of roulette wheel selection example

I have a lisp program on roulette wheel selection,I am trying to understand the theory behind it but I cannot understand anything.
How to calculate the fitness of the selected strng?
For example,if I have a string 01101,how did they get the fitness value as 169?
Is it that the binary coding of 01101 evaluates to 13,so i square the value and get the answer as 169?
That sounds lame but somehow I am getting the right answers by doing that.
The fitness function you have is therefore F=X^2.
The roulette wheel calculates the proportion (according to its fitness) of the whole that that individual (string) takes, this is then used to randomly select a set of strings for the next generation.
Suggest you read this a few times.
The "fitness function" for a given problem is chosen (often) arbitrarily keeping in mind that as the "fitness" metric rises, the solution should approach optimality. For example for a problem in which the objective is to minimize a positive value, the natural choice for F(x) would be 1/x.
For the problem at hand, it seems that the fitness function has been given as F(x) = val(x)*val(x) though one cannot be certain from just a single value pair of (x,F(x)).
Roulette-wheel selection is just a commonly employed method of fitness-based pseudo-random selection. This is easy to understand if you've ever played roulette or watched 'Wheel of Fortune'.
Let us consider the simplest case, where F(x) = val(x),
Suppose we have four values, 1,2,3 and 4.
This implies that these "individuals" have fitnesses 1,2,3 and 4 respectively. Now the probability of selection of an individual 'x1' is calculated as F(x1)/(sum of all F(x)). That is to say here, since the sum of the fitnesses would be 10, the probabilities of selection would be, respectively, 0.1,0.2,0.3 and 0.4.
Now if we consider these probabilities from a cumulative perspective the values of x would be mapped to the following ranges of "probability:
1 ---> (0.0, 0.1]
2 ---> (0.1, (0.1 + 0.2)] ---> (0.1, 0.3]
3 ---> (0.3, (0.1 + 0.2 + 0.3)] ---> (0.3, 0.6]
4 ---> (0.6, (0.1 + 0.2 + 0.3 + 0.4)] ---> (0.6, 1.0]
That is, an instance of a uniformly distributed random variable generated, say R lying in the normalised interval, (0, 1], is four times as likely to be in the interval corresponding to 4 as to that corresponding to 1.
To put it another way, suppose you were to spin a roulette-wheel-type structure with each x assigned a sector with the areas of the sectors being in proportion to their respective values of F(x), then the probability that the indicator will stop in any given sector is directly propotional to the value of F(x) for that x.

Compute 4^x mod 2π for large x

I need to compute sin(4^x) with x > 1000 in Matlab, with is basically sin(4^x mod 2π) Since the values inside the sin function become very large, Matlab returns infinite for 4^1000. How can I efficiently compute this?
I prefer to avoid large data types.
I think that a transformation to something like sin(n*π+z) could be a possible solution.
You need to be careful, as there will be a loss of precision. The sin function is periodic, but 4^1000 is a big number. So effectively, we subtract off a multiple of 2*pi to move the argument into the interval [0,2*pi).
4^1000 is roughly 1e600, a really big number. So I'll do my computations using my high precision floating point tool in MATLAB. (In fact, one of my explicit goals when I wrote HPF was to be able to compute a number like sin(1e400). Even if you are doing something for the fun of it, doing it right still makes sense.) In this case, since I know that the power we are interested in is roughly 1e600, then I'll do my computations in more than 600 digits of precision, expecting that I'll lose 600 digits by the subtractive cancellation. This is a massive subtractive cancellation issue. Think about it. That modulus operation is effectively a difference between two numbers that will be identical for the first 600 digits or so!
X = hpf(4,1000);
X^1000
ans =
114813069527425452423283320117768198402231770208869520047764273682576626139237031385665948631650626991844596463898746277344711896086305533142593135616665318539129989145312280000688779148240044871428926990063486244781615463646388363947317026040466353970904996558162398808944629605623311649536164221970332681344168908984458505602379484807914058900934776500429002716706625830522008132236281291761267883317206598995396418127021779858404042159853183251540889433902091920554957783589672039160081957216630582755380425583726015528348786419432054508915275783882625175435528800822842770817965453762184851149029376
What is the nearest multiple of 2*pi that does not exceed this number? We can get that by a simple operation.
twopi = 2*hpf('pi',1000);
twopi*floor(X^1000/twopi)
ans = 114813069527425452423283320117768198402231770208869520047764273682576626139237031385665948631650626991844596463898746277344711896086305533142593135616665318539129989145312280000688779148240044871428926990063486244781615463646388363947317026040466353970904996558162398808944629605623311649536164221970332681344168908984458505602379484807914058900934776500429002716706625830522008132236281291761267883317206598995396418127021779858404042159853183251540889433902091920554957783589672039160081957216630582755380425583726015528348786419432054508915275783882625175435528800822842770817965453762184851149029372.6669043995793459614134256945369645075601351114240611660953769955068077703667306957296141306508448454625087552917109594896080531977700026110164492454168360842816021326434091264082935824243423723923797225539436621445702083718252029147608535630355342037150034246754736376698525786226858661984354538762888998045417518871508690623462425811535266975472894356742618714099283198893793280003764002738670747
As you can see, the first 600 digits were the same. Now, when we subtract the two numbers,
X^1000 - twopi*floor(X^1000/twopi)
ans =
3.333095600420654038586574305463035492439864888575938833904623004493192229633269304270385869349155154537491244708289040510391946802229997388983550754583163915718397867356590873591706417575657627607620277446056337855429791628174797085239146436964465796284996575324526362330147421377314133801564546123711100195458248112849130937653757418846473302452710564325738128590071680110620671999623599726132925263826
This is why I referred to it as a massive subtractive cancellation issue. The two numbers were identical for many digits. Even carrying 1000 digits of accuracy, we lost many digits. When you subtract the two numbers, even though we are carrying a result with 1000 digits, only the highest order 400 digits are now meaningful.
HPF is able to compute the trig function of course. But as we showed above, we should only trust roughly the first 400 digits of the result. (On some problems, the local shape of the sin function might cause us to lose more digits than that.)
sin(X^1000)
ans =
-0.1903345812720831838599439606845545570938837404109863917294376841894712513865023424095542391769688083234673471544860353291299342362176199653705319268544933406487071446348974733627946491118519242322925266014312897692338851129959945710407032269306021895848758484213914397204873580776582665985136229328001258364005927758343416222346964077953970335574414341993543060039082045405589175008978144047447822552228622246373827700900275324736372481560928339463344332977892008702220160335415291421081700744044783839286957735438564512465095046421806677102961093487708088908698531980424016458534629166108853012535493022540352439740116731784303190082954669140297192942872076015028260408231321604825270343945928445589223610185565384195863513901089662882903491956506613967241725877276022863187800632706503317201234223359028987534885835397133761207714290279709429427673410881392869598191090443394014959206395112705966050737703851465772573657470968976925223745019446303227806333289071966161759485260639499431164004196825
So am I right, and we cannot trust all of these digits? I'll do the same computation, once in 1000 digits of precision, then a second time in 2000 digits. Compute the absolute difference, then take the log10. The 2000 digit result will be our reference as essentially exact compared to the 1000 digit result.
double(log10(abs(sin(hpf(4,[1000 0])^1000) - sin(hpf(4,[2000 0])^1000))))
ans =
-397.45
Ah. So of those 1000 digits of precision we started out with, we lost 602 digits. The last 602 digits in the result are non-zero, but still complete garbage. This was as I expected. Just because your computer reports high precision, you need to know when not to trust it.
Can we do the computation without recourse to a high precision tool? Be careful. For example, suppose we use a powermod type of computation? Thus, compute the desired power, while taking the modulus at every step. Thus, done in double precision:
X = 1;
for i = 1:1000
X = mod(X*4,2*pi);
end
sin(X)
ans =
0.955296299215251
Ah, but remember that the true answer was -0.19033458127208318385994396068455455709388...
So there is essentially nothing of significance remaining. We have lost all our information in that computation. As I said, it is important to be careful.
What happened was after each step in that loop, we incurred a tiny loss in the modulus computation. But then we multiplied the answer by 4, which caused the error to grow by a factor of 4, and then another factor of 4, etc. And of course, after each step, the result loses a tiny bit at the end of the number. The final result was complete crapola.
Lets look at the operation for a smaller power, just to convince ourselves what happened. Here for example, try the 20th power. Using double precision,
mod(4^20,2*pi)
ans =
3.55938555711037
Now, use a loop in a powermod computation, taking the mod after every step. Essentially, this discards multiples of 2*pi after each step.
X = 1;
for i = 1:20
X = mod(X*4,2*pi);
end
X
X =
3.55938555711037
But is that the correct value? Again, I'll use hpf to compute the correct value, showing the first 20 digits of that number. (Since I've done the computation in 50 total digits, I'll absolutely trust the first 20 of them.)
mod(hpf(4,[20,30])^20,2*hpf('pi',[20,30]))
ans =
3.5593426962577983146
In fact, while the results in double precision agree to the last digit shown, those double results were both actually wrong past the 5th significant digit. As it turns out, we STILL need to carry more than 600 digits of precision for this loop to produce a result of any significance.
Finally, to fully kill this dead horse, we might ask if a better powermod computation can be done. That is, we know that 1000 can be decomposed into a binary form (use dec2bin) as:
512 + 256 + 128 + 64 + 32 + 8
ans =
1000
Can we use a repeated squaring scheme to expand that large power with fewer multiplications, and so cause less accumulated error? Essentially, we might try to compute
4^1000 = 4^8 * 4^32 * 4^64 * 4^128 * 4^256 * 4^512
However, do this by repeatedly squaring 4, then taking the mod after each operation. This fails however, since the modulo operation will only remove integer multiples of 2*pi. After all, mod really is designed to work on integers. So look at what happens. We can express 4^2 as:
4^2 = 16 = 3.43362938564083 + 2*(2*pi)
Can we just square the remainder however, then taking the mod again? NO!
mod(3.43362938564083^2,2*pi)
ans =
5.50662545075664
mod(4^4,2*pi)
ans =
4.67258771281655
We can understand what happened when we expand this form:
4^4 = (4^2)^2 = (3.43362938564083 + 2*(2*pi))^2
What will you get when you remove INTEGER multiples of 2*pi? You need to understand why the direct loop allowed me to remove integer multiples of 2*pi, but the above squaring operation does not. Of course, the direct loop failed too because of numerical issues.
I would first redefine the question as follows: compute 4^1000 modulo 2pi. So we have split the problem in two.
Use some math trickery:
(a+2pi*K)*(b+2piL) = ab + 2pi*(garbage)
Hence, you can just multiply 4 many times by itself and computing mod 2pi every stage. The real question to ask, of course, is what is the precision of this thing. This needs careful mathematical analysis. It may or may not be a total crap.
Following to Pavel's hint with mod I found a mod function for high powers on mathwors.com.
bigmod(number,power,modulo) can NOT compute 4^4000 mod 2π. Because it just works with integers as modulo and not with decimals.
This statement is not correct anymore: sin(4^x) is sin(bidmod(4,x,2*pi)).

Dijkstra's algorithm with negative weights

Can we use Dijkstra's algorithm with negative weights?
STOP! Before you think "lol nub you can just endlessly hop between two points and get an infinitely cheap path", I'm more thinking of one-way paths.
An application for this would be a mountainous terrain with points on it. Obviously going from high to low doesn't take energy, in fact, it generates energy (thus a negative path weight)! But going back again just wouldn't work that way, unless you are Chuck Norris.
I was thinking of incrementing the weight of all points until they are non-negative, but I'm not sure whether that will work.
As long as the graph does not contain a negative cycle (a directed cycle whose edge weights have a negative sum), it will have a shortest path between any two points, but Dijkstra's algorithm is not designed to find them. The best-known algorithm for finding single-source shortest paths in a directed graph with negative edge weights is the Bellman-Ford algorithm. This comes at a cost, however: Bellman-Ford requires O(|V|·|E|) time, while Dijkstra's requires O(|E| + |V|log|V|) time, which is asymptotically faster for both sparse graphs (where E is O(|V|)) and dense graphs (where E is O(|V|^2)).
In your example of a mountainous terrain (necessarily a directed graph, since going up and down an incline have different weights) there is no possibility of a negative cycle, since this would imply leaving a point and then returning to it with a net energy gain - which could be used to create a perpetual motion machine.
Increasing all the weights by a constant value so that they are non-negative will not work. To see this, consider the graph where there are two paths from A to B, one traversing a single edge of length 2, and one traversing edges of length 1, 1, and -2. The second path is shorter, but if you increase all edge weights by 2, the first path now has length 4, and the second path has length 6, reversing the shortest paths. This tactic will only work if all possible paths between the two points use the same number of edges.
If you read the proof of optimality, one of the assumptions made is that all the weights are non-negative. So, no. As Bart recommends, use Bellman-Ford if there are no negative cycles in your graph.
You have to understand that a negative edge isn't just a negative number --- it implies a reduction in the cost of the path. If you add a negative edge to your path, you have reduced the cost of the path --- if you increment the weights so that this edge is now non-negative, it does not have that reducing property anymore and thus this is a different graph.
I encourage you to read the proof of optimality --- there you will see that the assumption that adding an edge to an existing path can only increase (or not affect) the cost of the path is critical.
You can use Dijkstra's on a negative weighted graph but you first have to find the proper offset for each Vertex. That is essentially what Johnson's algorithm does. But that would be overkill since Johnson's uses Bellman-Ford to find the weight offset(s). Johnson's is designed to all shortest paths between pairs of Vertices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson%27s_algorithm
There is actually an algorithm which uses Dijkstra's algorithm in a negative path environment; it does so by removing all the negative edges and rebalancing the graph first. This algorithm is called 'Johnson's Algorithm'.
The way it works is by adding a new node (lets say Q) which has 0 cost to traverse to every other node in the graph. It then runs Bellman-Ford on the graph from point Q, getting a cost for each node with respect to Q which we will call q[x], which will either be 0 or a negative number (as it used one of the negative paths).
E.g. a -> -3 -> b, therefore if we add a node Q which has 0 cost to all of these nodes, then q[a] = 0, q[b] = -3.
We then rebalance out the edges using the formula: weight + q[source] - q[destination], so the new weight of a->b is -3 + 0 - (-3) = 0. We do this for all other edges in the graph, then remove Q and its outgoing edges and voila! We now have a rebalanced graph with no negative edges to which we can run dijkstra's on!
The running time is O(nm) [bellman-ford] + n x O(m log n) [n Dijkstra's] + O(n^2) [weight computation] = O (nm log n) time
More info: http://joonki-jeong.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/johnsons-algorithm.html
Actually I think it'll work to modify the edge weights. Not with an offset but with a factor. Assume instead of measuring the distance you are measuring the time required from point A to B.
weight = time = distance / velocity
You could even adapt velocity depending on the slope to use the physical one if your task is for real mountains and car/bike.
Yes, you could do that with adding one step at the end i.e.
If v ∈ Q, Then Decrease-Key(Q, v, v.d)
Else Insert(Q, v) and S = S \ {v}.
An expression tree is a binary tree in which all leaves are operands (constants or variables), and the non-leaf nodes are binary operators (+, -, /, *, ^). Implement this tree to model polynomials with the basic methods of the tree including the following:
A function that calculates the first derivative of a polynomial.
Evaluate a polynomial for a given value of x.
[20] Use the following rules for the derivative: Derivative(constant) = 0 Derivative(x) = 1 Derivative(P(x) + Q(y)) = Derivative(P(x)) + Derivative(Q(y)) Derivative(P(x) - Q(y)) = Derivative(P(x)) - Derivative(Q(y)) Derivative(P(x) * Q(y)) = P(x)*Derivative(Q(y)) + Q(x)*Derivative(P(x)) Derivative(P(x) / Q(y)) = P(x)*Derivative(Q(y)) - Q(x)*Derivative(P(x)) Derivative(P(x) ^ Q(y)) = Q(y) * (P(x) ^(Q(y) - 1)) * Derivative(Q(y))